With the ongoing Indo-Pak war, netizens’ interest is shifting towards law, warzone, and military films like Uri: The Surgical Strike, Fighter, Gunjan Saxena, The Ghazi Attack, and Mission Majnu. Following the bangwagon, Jahanvi Kapoor’s quite underrated spy thriller “Ulajh” is trending on Netflix now. Let’s discuss whether it’s worth watching or not!
Love or National Threat
The plot follows Suhana Bhatia, aka Jahavi Kapoor, a Deputy High Commissioner in the Indian Foreign Service, London. She comes from a proud lineage of diplomats. Soon her ambition falls pit due to her affair with Nakul. He’s revealed as an ISI agent, Akhtar, who targets and blackmails Suhana to reveal confidential information on the Pakistani Prime Minister’s visit to India. Later drags her into dangerous espionage and conspiracy. Further, the story delves deep into the revelations and betrayal of her consolidates, and how Suhana will stop the assassination attempt and regain her honour from the rest.
Not-So Thrilling
Director Sudhanshu Saria tried too hard to maintain the emotional suspense and thrill throughout. His idea to bring out something new from the predictable and implausible plot didn’t actually work. The thing is, this storyline has a lot of potential that neither the director nor the screenplay explores. They can go deeper into the character arcs, motives, creating the real vibe of the espionage film. The risks are actually quite high, even not welcomed by a common officer, but they rubbed off all the stress on the actress, which seems amateur and lagging. Overall, the film needed more refined writing, emphasis on dialogue, and acting.
Character development
The Ulajh film is women-centric and runs on Jahnavi’s perspective of making things right. She tried hard to convince the audience with her intense acting, which is an okayish vibe. Also, the whole espionage situation and stress are on and off. One moment we will be connected to the story, the next it’s down. Also, most of the side characters were very underdeveloped. Actors like Gulshan Devaiah and Roshan Mathew are effective, & if only used them better for story depth, it would’ve been a better film.
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Soundtrack
The music director, Shaswat Sachdev, is good at creating a blend of party to patriotic music for the film. The “Shaukan” song by Neha Kakkar and Jubin Nautiyal is a viral tune, along with “Main Hoon Tere Ae Watan” as background song, is a resonance of respect & responsibility towards the country. Other songs like “Aaja Oye” and “Ilahi Mere Rubaroo” are deficient in tunes. So music didn’t disappoint.
Final Verdict
If you keep high expectations on intensity & thrill like “Rani Mukherjee’s Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway”, then this would certainly be a little disappointment, as both actors are quite talented, but one didn’t use them well. Many critics pointed out that, inconsistent plotline was the big flaw. I would say it’s an okayish one-time watch.
IMDb: 6/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 36% My Ratings:3.5/5
Written by: Meghana Pinninti